Michigan

This 'Hangover' may last all summer long

There's a little litmus test I've found to determine how successful a comedy will be. Listen to the viewers as they exit the theater and see if they're actually talking about the movie, reminding their friends about the jokes, quoting the best lines, etc. If they are, there's a better-than-average chance the film will be a smash.

In the summer of 1998, I heard that kind of reaction to a sneak preview of "There's Something About Mary." In 2007, I heard it after an early screening of "Superbad." And last week, I heard it after a couple hundred viewers got their first look at "The Hangover," which opens June 5.

I can't give you a full review of the movie just yet, but I'll tell this much: The movie is raunchy as all-get-out and as nasty as an R-rating will allow it to be. It's also thoroughly -- sometimes even painfully -- hilarious.

It's the sordid story of two friends, Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms), who escort a third friend, Doug (Justin Bartha), to Las Vegas for a bachelor party blowout. Zach Galifianakis plays Alan, the groom's future brother-in-law, a severely socially impaired sort who weasels his way into joining the group.

It's Alan who triggers a series of disasters when he mixes the sleeping pill flunitrazepam into Jagermeister, an herbal-flavored German liqueur, that the guys drink to start off the evening.

We never actually see everything that transpires during the night of debauchery.

"Hangover" is sort of the comic answer to the 1986 Jane Fonda thriller "The Morning After," in which she played an alcoholic who awakens in a strange bed after a binge and has to piece together the events of the previous night after she's accused of murder.

Phil, Stu and Alan don't wake up next to a corpse like Fonda did, although they face many other circumstances that prove to be equally hard to explain, such as why there's a tiger prowling around in the bathroom of their sumptuous Caesar's Palace villa, or which mystery woman left a baby in the closet.

There's nothing unusual about hearing chuckles at a comedy, but the "Hangover" audience last week actually screamed with laughter at several points in the film.

Several patches of dialogue were completely drowned out by sustained gales of laughter, and that certainly doesn't happen very often.

And on the way out of the theater, everyone was trading their favorite lines of dialogue and recounting all the best moments.

"The Hangover" opens opposite Will Ferrell's "Land of the Lost." Don't be startled if it sticks around a lot longer than the competition.